Delivery emails really a scam

Connie, who lives in the New Haven area, was not surprised when she received an email that appeared to have come from Best Buy.

Shortly before Christmas she had dropped off her camera at a Best Buy store in North Haven to have it repaired and was expecting it to be shipped to her home.

The email informed her that Best Buy did not have her correct account information and that she should click on the "form" and update her account. There was what appeared to be a tracking number in the email.

But the email did not come from Best Buy, it came from criminals who wanted access to her computer and to possibly sensitive information.

Connie is one of tens of thousands of people who during the last few weeks received these emails pretending to have been sent by Best Buy, Costco and Wal-Mart. They all say that their orders can't be delivered because of an incorrect address and warned that if the address is not updated within a week a portion of their payment would be deducted from their refund. The subject lines had things like "express delivery failure," "special order delivery problem," and "scheduled home delivery problem."

Costco is warning its customers not to open these emails.

"If you received an email concerning a delivery failure or cancellation: immediately delete the email and do not reply. This is a phishing scam and was not sent by Costco. Costco is not affiliated with the email in any way," says a recording on its national customer service telephone line.

Connie is not new to viruses. She said that 10 years ago her computer was infected.

However, she said she was less careful this time and did not closely read the "From" line, which would have told her that it really wasn't sent by Best Buy.

Not only was she waiting for the camera to be delivered, she had recently moved, giving her less reason to be suspicious of the email.

When she clicked on the "form" her computer shut down.

She rebooted her computer, and still thinking that nothing was wrong, she replied to the email by putting in her new address. Her email was returned as undeliverable.

"That is when I knew something was wrong," she told CtWatchdog.

The virus partially took control of her Internet Explorer browser taking her to more than 30 sites, many containing pop-ups asking her to download free programs.

It took her four days, using several free programs, before she was able to rid her computer of the virus, which she said turned out to be DOS/Rovnix.W.

She said she first used Microsoft Security Essentials, which identified the virus and then used Malwarebytes and Ad-Aware from Lavasoft to complete the process.

A few days later she received an email pretending to come from Costco. She is not a Costco member and this time she looked closely at the From line and saw that it was sent from a foreign address.